Author Archive: Martin

Walk into the Camden County Democratic headquarters in Cherry Hill, and you will almost certainly meet nice, motivated, bright liberals like yourself who merely want to win races for Democrats. No shadowy Sopranos-esque organization here. This diary addresses the question of whether the Camden County Democratic Committee and overall organization need reforming and new leadership. My criteria for reform is as follows. Regardless of political party or ideology, any organization that exchanges favoritism in exchange for financial gain is indeed ethically compromised. Further, any politician who votes on bills directly related to his or her employer must not be able to do so, and any political broker who is not held accountable to the general public, particularly voters, should not have unchecked power. You can see where I’m going with this.

New Jersey, partly a mid-Atlantic corridor to the northeast, partly a suburban sprawl nightmare, is an environmental epicenter for not only the region but the nation. As progressives, we have a responsibility to preserve as much clean air, land, and water as possible for future generations. As New Jerseyans, we have a major stake in preserving the environment all the way from Bergen to Salem County. What might a list of the ten most important local environmental hot-spots in New Jersey look like?

In my mind, atheism as a philosophical stance and progressivism as a political movement go hand-in-hand. Atheism promotes human and secular concerns and real-world change over belief in an absolute, eternal system of equality in the afterlife; and the progressive movement?s emphasis on social progress has roots in secular, non-religious modes of thinking. I would imagine that many a progressive Blue Jersey reader is, in fact, somewhere in the secular humanist/atheist/agnostic ideological spectrum. The question is, then, why, in one of the most progressive states in the country, there are no public officials who are declared atheists and secular thinking often takes such a backseat to theism in state politics?

In the thin sliver of a county that is Camden County, with over 500,000 residents bunched into 222 square miles, remaining open space is few and far between. Unmitigated growth of this Philadelphia suburban county, with very little foresight, has resulted in one of the most developed counties in the state. The problems and financial constraints involved in open space preservation, though, coupled with the high cost of land in places like Cherry Hill, Haddon Heights, and Haddonfield, make preserving open space a difficult endeavor. My sense is that any progressive agenda must include environmental preservation and long-term sustainability as part of its platform, and this includes work to preserve open space on a local level.

State Senator Steve Sweeney and Assemblyman John Burzichelli are legislators that you, Blue Jersey reader, may know from the former’s ascension to Senate Majority Leader and the latter’s work as Deputy Speaker of the Assembly in the Assembly Budget Committee. Sweeney just was also reelected with relative ease to the Gloucester County Board of Freeholders, and therein lies the problem: Between Sweeney and Burzichelli, they have five public offices that they are holding at once. Sweeney, who serves as state senator, freeholder, and business representative of Ironworkers Union Local 399, has three public offices, while Burzichelli, who besides serving in the assembly is the mayor of Paulsboro, has two.

This evening, The League of Women Voters sponsored a candidate forum/debate between Adler and Myers at the Jewish Community Center in Cherry Hill. The debate was lively, the attendance was strong (probably over 200), and our guy Adler put on quite a performance — this after, I heard him say, two other events in 24 hours. The debate was moderated by someone from LWV, and there were three panelists who first directed questions to the candidates; of the three panelists, there was Mike Daniels, the editorial page director for the (too conservative at times) Courier Post, and a Rutgers business professor.

Having just returned from the second debate between John Adler and Chris Myers, I thought I would provide a brief report. The debate was held at a Jewish Temple (M’kor Shalom) in Cherry Hill, the same place where Adler has been a parishioner for years.

A few months ago, Blue Jersey’s Jason Springer detailed Republican congressional candidate Chris Myers’ selective amnesia about GOP corruption in Burlington County. It was when Myers was pressed by a reporter about his campaign contributions from de facto BurlCo GOP boss Glenn Paulsen and Garfield DeMarco, former BurlCo Bridge Commission boss, that he rather incredulously said “You’ll have to talk to Glenn about that.” Besides being stunned by Myers’ refusal to acknowledge corruption in his own party – I’ve gotten used to Myers demurring from answering tough questions in public – I was struck at how one of the state’s most corrupt party bosses was on a first name basis with a congressional candidate.

At a time when Jon Corzine is getting pretty beat up in the court of public opinion, some very good news about his policies received little notice last week, and this news seems to validate Corzine’s economic policies to some extent. Wall Street just gave the governor some very welcome news ,about his policies.